


Sing Me To Sleep

by IndigoNight



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (off screen), Canonical Character Death, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pre-Canon, Underage Substance Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:58:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1992387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tony's parents die, Rhodey goes to check up on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me To Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> Tony is seventeen in this fic, so technically (depending on where you are) he's underage. In this fic there is reference to his consumption of alcohol, and some sexual innuendo (though nothing actually occurs). Additionally this fic deals with the immediate fall out of the death of Tony's parents. Read at your own discretion.

“Tony?” Rhodey’s knock on the door was firm and insistent. He had to shout to be heard over the pounding of deafening rock music coming through the door.

It had been three days since the funeral. The funeral that Tony hadn’t attended. In fact, no one had seen or heard from Tony since he’d been given the news of his parents’ death.

There was no answer to Rhodey’s knock, and he didn’t try again. He simply let himself in with the key that Tony had never officially given him, but he had anyway.

Tony was living on the top floor of what had been an industrial factory before it had been converted into an apartment building. The fact that his studio apartment was an absolute mess was not a surprise to Rhodey, nor were the tangled wires and scraps of metal that covered nearly every surface, nor were the mostly empty alcohol bottles. Tony wasn’t good at cleaning up after himself, and he hated letting other people mess with his personal spaces. Except, everything was somehow worse. Usually the empty bottles accumulated over weeks and months, but there were too many; too many of them had been spilled, and there were far too many shattered pieces of glass and torn labels littering the floor as though a number of bottles had been hurled against the walls.

Rhodey picked his way carefully over the glass, turning down the music as he passed the sound system. Something that looked like a claw from an arcade crane machine was whirring around in sad circles on mismatched wheels and running repeatedly into the couch. Tony’s leg was hooked over the back of the couch and he was laying face down on the coffee table, which had inexplicably been moved around behind the couch, his face worryingly close to a pile of congealed vomit. He was wearing a filthy tank top and a pair of boxer shorts, and reeked of at least four different kinds of alcohol.

To Rhodey’s great relief, Tony shifted, his leg slipping off of the back of the couch as he half rolled onto his side when Rhodey turned down the music. “I was listening to that,” Tony mumbled. His face twisted into a look of disgust as he lifted it off of the coffee table. He coughed and spat, reaching for the nearest half empty bottle of scotch.

Rhodey reached him in time to snag the bottle out of his hand and catch him before he tipped over again. “You’re a mess, man,” he pointed out, though he didn’t really expect Tony to be listening to him. Tony’s eyes were fixed somewhere over Rhodey’s shoulder; they were red-rimmed and unfocused. He looked sad, and young, and it made Rhodey mad. It been a week since Tony’s parents died, had no one checked up on him? 

Rhodey’s hand ended up cupping the side of Tony’s face, the pad of his thumb dragging through streaks of grease and dried flecks of vomit on Tony’s cheek. Tony leaned into his touch, unconsciously, Rhodey was sure; that minute moment was the closest Tony ever let himself come to asking for help, and it made Rhodey’s heart hurt. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said gently, hoisting Tony to his feet.

“Right,” Tony slurred. He leaned so heavily on Rhodey that Rhodey might as well have been carrying him. “Gotta go… gotta go to the funeral…”

“The funeral is over,” Rhodey said. He never lied to Tony, no matter how much he wanted to; he was one of the only people who never lied to Tony and Rhodey knew that, it was part of what made them work.

Tony paused for a moment, then he gave a lopsided shrug that would have caused him to topple over if Rhodey hadn’t held him up. “Fine,” he said, a heavy dose of petulance in his tone, “wasn’t here when he was alive, no reason I should…” he trailed off, mumbling to himself too incoherently for Rhodey to follow.

“Yeah, okay, into the shower, come on,” Rhodey said, hoping to pull Tony back to the present. He dragged Tony into the bathroom. Briefly, he mentally debated Tony’s ability to actually stand up in the shower to the potential risk of Tony falling beneath the surface of a bath. Showers, Rhodey decided, were both faster and easier.

“I like where this is going,” Tony leered into Rhodey’s shoulder while Rhodey wrestled off his tank top for him. He had his arms draped around Rhodey’s shoulders to keep himself upright and his breath was hot and damp against Rhodey’s neck. “It was only a matter of time until you got me naked.”

Rhodey ignored him; he was pretty good at it by that point. Tony had been hitting on him off and on since the day they met. Rhodey said no. Not a lot of people said no to Tony, and Rhodey had a suspicion that that was why Tony let him stick around, it made him interesting, and challenging. “Tony, you’re disgusting right now. When was the last time you slept? Or ate something that didn’t come out of a bottle?” Rhodey kept talking as he pulled off Tony’s boxers, to distract them both. He was efficient and impersonal. He’d seen everything Tony had to see before; Tony had only a very loose relationship with the concept of modesty at the best of times. “I’m going to get you cleaned up, and into some fresh clothes. I’m going to get some food in you, and then I’m going to tuck you into bed.”

Tony snorted and leered. “Yeah you are,” he said. Rhodey rolled his eyes and ignored him.

He nudged Tony into the shower. Tony flinched at the first burst of cold water before it started to warm up, but when Tony’s eyes focused on him for the first time, Rhodey couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about it.

“Now I feel silly,” Tony complained. His fingers were curled in the edge of Rhodey’s jacket, half to help keep his balance and half in an attempt to pull Rhodey into the shower with him. “Come on, get rid of this, it’s only fair.”

“Wash, Tony,” Rhodey ordered. He did pry Tony’s fingers loose and shuck off his jacket, along with his shoes and socks, but he kept the rest of his clothes on, accepting the possibility that they would get wet.

Reluctantly, Tony gave in and leaned into the spray of now hot water. He sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his face up into the jet, and Rhodey could see some of the tension draining out of Tony’s body.

Rhodey, very purposefully, kept his gaze on Tony’s face. For all that Tony would be eighteen in a couple of months, and he hardly acted his age anyway - sometimes he acted like he was five years old and times times he acted like he was thirty, but there was very little in between - but there was a line, and Rhodey wasn’t about to cross it. All the same, Rhodey was only human, and hardly a saint. Sometimes he thought about it, and sometimes he let himself look at Tony in ways that he shouldn’t, and probably, some day, Tony would ask and Rhodey wouldn’t say no. But this was not the time, and that was the last thing Tony needed right then, regardless of what Tony thought he wanted.

It wasn’t exactly a thorough shower, and while the water had perked Tony up enough to keep him on his feet, he was swaying ominously and he kept just… stopping, for several minutes, as though he temporarily forgot what he was doing. So Rhodey made sure he washed off the visible mess and considered that good enough for now. Rhodey turned off the water and held out one of Tony’s large, fluffy towels for Tony to step into. Tony stumbled as he stepped out onto the rug, though the movement was a little too smooth and to Rhodey it seemed suspiciously contrived. Rhodey caught him anyway, steadying him and wrapping the towel around him.

Tony just grinned, letting his forward momentum put his face right next to Rhodey’s. “I think… you said something about bed?” Tony said, wiggling an eyebrow. Under just about any other circumstance Rhodey would have laughed; Tony was a smooth person, he’d been groomed since birth to be charming and convincing, and Rhodey knew Tony could do it because he’d seen Tony work that magic on countless of other people. But somehow, on the rare occasion that Tony tried to turn his charm Rhodey, it always just seemed ridiculous.

Rhodey didn’t dignify Tony with an answer, which seemed the best route when Tony was too drunk to be teased or reasoned with. Instead he focused on getting Tony into a clean t-shirt and pair of shorts, which was a lot more difficult than it needed to be thanks to Tony’s impaired balance and his refusal to unwrap his arms from around Rhodey’s shoulders.

“You’re so good to me, Rhodey,” Tony mumbled. His head fell forward and he rested his cheek against Rhodey’s. It was still damp from the shower and his hair stuck to the side of Rhodey’s face. “You’re my… You’re all I have.” Tony pulled back just a little, before leaning in again, and he almost succeeded in hitting Rhodey’s lips with a wet, desperate kiss. It was only Rhodey’s quick reflexes that allowed him to turn his face in time, giving Tony his cheek instead. Tony made a sound, low and hurt and pleading, and for a second Rhodey almost broke, almost gave in. 

But instead he disentangled himself from Tony’s arms, holding him at arm’s length. “Tony,” he said, his voice gentle but firm.

Tony blinked at him. The droop of his mess hair across Tony’s forehead framed his wide, sad eyes, and good god Tony looked so very _young_. “My parents are dead,” Tony said, his lips clumsy and slow, the words jilted and uneven, as though the truth of it was hitting him to him for the first time, or all over again.

“Yeah,” Rhodey agreed quietly.

Tony turned his head, fixing his eyes on a point to Rhodey’s left and gritting his teeth, but Rhodey could see the tears he was trying to hide glittering plainly in his eyes. He decided that trying to feed Tony could wait. Tony didn’t speak again as Rhodey towed him to his bed, set up in one of the back corners of the studio; the only part of the entire apartment that wasn’t covered in bits of machinery. Tony let Rhodey ease him down onto the bed, let Rhodey pull the blankets over him, but he refused to let go when Rhodey tried to pull away.

Tony’s fingers, strong and callused from his work, curled around Rhodey’s wrist. He pulled until Rhodey had no choice but to lean down so that their faces were close together. “I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Tony confessed in a whisper. His gaze shifted over Rhodey’s face, searching for something, but what Rhodey didn’t know. Rhodey didn’t have an answer for him. He didn’t have a way to make any of this okay.

So Rhodey did the only thing he could do. He lay down in the bed beside Tony, and wrapped his arms around his body - lean from too many meals missed due to distraction, but beginning to harden as his muscles developed - and he pulled Tony against his chest. Tony sank into Rhodey with a sniff. He was horribly limp and passive, all of the fight and all of the flirtatiousness gone out of him. Within a few minutes it wasn’t just Tony’s wet hair that was soaking Rhodey’s shirt, and Rhodey didn’t say anything about it. He just tucked the blanket more securely around the both of them, and settled himself with Tony pressed securely against his side, Tony’s face buried in his shoulder, and he let Tony cry.

Even after Tony had cried himself to sleep, Rhodey stayed where he was. He ran his fingers gently through Tony’s hair, brushing it back from his face. One of Tony’s hands was curled limply in the fabric of Rhodey’s t-shirt, clinging to him like a child with a security blanket. It never ceased to amaze Rhodey how Tony could be so young, and yet so old at the same time. But then again, a lot of things about Tony never ceased to amaze him. Tony was a little bit like the sun, wrapped up in a tornado of brilliance and hope and anger and fear. It was mesmerizing and terrifying all at once. Terrifying, because it was so easy to get sucked up in Tony’s gravitational pull, so easy to get lost in the labyrinth of Tony’s incredible mind. And Rhodey was alright stuck. He might fight it, might keep himself at the edges of it as much as he could, but he was already, irrevocably stuck in Tony’s orbit. He’d accepted that.

As Rhodey watched Tony, watched the way his face creased with pain and grief even in sleep, he did more than accept it. He made himself a promise. He couldn’t save Tony from himself, he knew that and he was smart enough not to try, but he could be there. Rhodey could watch Tony’s back, and dig him out of the rubble of whatever Tony got himself into, and, when Tony really needed it, he could hold Tony and give him a safe place to hide, at least for a little while. And that, Rhodey swore to himself, he would do, for as long as Tony let him. He sealed the promise by allowing himself one light, chaste kiss, pressed into Tony’s damp hair.

“I’m with you, Tony,” he promised in a whisper. “I’ve got your back.”


End file.
